


The Count

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:58:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midnight philosophy - post <i>“The Rack”</i>, and taking <i>“Mission Impossible”</i> as canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Count

“Get more booze!” Doyle looked up at him from his slouch on the sofa, and Bodie blinked. It was late, he was tired...

“More?”

“More. ’s been a long week.”

It had been a long life, Bodie thought, but he got up obediently. “You’ll feel like hell in the morning.”

“Feel like hell anyway. Might as well have a hangover to concentrate on.”

“I could cut your head off.”

“Mmmn. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Saturday. Followed, too briefly, by Sunday, but that was still two days off in a row, and it was more than they’d seen free of CI5 for over a month. So he’d stay up late with Doyle tonight, drink their memories away again, and maybe sleep for the whole weekend. 

Except...

“That true then?” Doyle’s voice rose over the electric hum of the kitchen, “You don’t know ‘ow many people you’ve killed?”

Bodie shrugged unseen, busied himself with opening the litre bottle of cheap Spanish plonk he’d unearthed from the back of the hall cupboard. He couldn’t remember buying it, so it was probably left over from some party, bound to be gut rot, but at half eleven at night Doyle’d take what he could get. 

It had been a long day after a long week, and the last thing he wanted to do was think about Geraldine bloody Mather. He trudged back through to the sitting room, collapsed onto the couch again, and held out the bottle. Doyle waved a glass towards him, and Bodie wrapped his hand around it, around Doyle’s hand, while he poured the thin red wine. _Glug, glug_ , he thought, and shrugged again.

“You lob a grenade into the bushes...” he said, as he’d said in court, but this was Doyle, and there was no reason why he should be the only one to suffer now. “You?”

“Twenty two.”

“Eh?” That couldn’t be right.

“Was up to twenty two and I forgot to count any more. Just...” he took a mouthful of wine, grimaced, and then took another, looking thoughtful, “...forgot.”

“Better that way.”

“Yeah, but... it shouldn’t be. Don’t even remember most of the faces.”

“Ah, c’mon Ray.”

“’s alright for you – bombs in bushes.”

“It’s not alright for me,” Bodie said, affronted despite himself, “I remember the last person I killed, I remember the first person I killed.” He did too – an ugly bastard on the _Farraday_ he’d been, and it’d been Bodie’s virtue or the ugly bastard’s life at stake. Bodie’d thrown him overboard, listened to his cries fade away in the night and in the wake of the ship, and chosen his bedmates more carefully from then on.

“First and last, eh?” Doyle said thoughtfully.

“Ever done it when you didn’t have to?”

Doyle was quiet for so long that against his will Bodie turned to look at him. He was shaking his head, tiny movements, staring away into the evening.

“Well there you go then.” He reached over and nudged Doyle’s arm gently. He felt warm through his shirt, warm and alive and still Bodie’s partner, safe this time again from the big bad wolf. “No reason for the angels to keep count, no reason for us to keep count.”

“Hmmn.” 

In the kitchen, the fridge clicked itself off, so that the flat was almost silent but for the tick-tock of the old carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Their breath, their heartbeats.

“My first was that girl, day we met. You remember?”

Bodie nodded. He remembered a wisp of blonde hair through his sights, full lips and blue eyes. He remembered that Doyle’s harpoon gun had sent blood and bone and brains shattering from the girl’s head, spraying upwards, and outwards, and he remembered the screams of the hostages, their mouths open and raw with it. It had been like television, looking down from the balcony, as if it wasn’t happening to him, not again. And it wasn’t like it had happened in Africa, when he’d had to kill Letty, not at all, and yet that was all he’d been able to think of – and then the girl’s gun had hit the floor, had sent a spray of bullets that miraculously hit no one, before it too died. 

He remembered what he’d told Doyle, afterwards, as they walked away together. “Yesterday you hadn’t saved a dozen lives, now you have. Works both ways, y’know.”

“Everything changes,” Doyle said now, and sighed. Maybe he was remembering too. “Everything stays the same.”

Bodie blinked. _Midnight philosophy_ he thought fatalistically, throwing back the rest of his wine in a single swallow, filling his glass again and putting it down on the end table so that he could refill Doyle’s. 

Hands together again, steadying, warm.

Bodie stared at their fingers, almost interlaced around the glass stem, realised what he was doing and jerked back, so that wine slopped over the edge.

“Messy sod,” Doyle said, and then he lifted the glass to his lips, opened his mouth, and began to lick the wine from his fingers.

Bodie forgot to breathe.

After a moment – surely only a moment – Doyle looked over to him, a smile twisting from those lips. “First lover?”

Startled, Bodie met his eyes then, knew he looked like a deer in headlights, knew that Doyle had seen it.

“First _lover_?”

“First kill, first lover,” Doyle confirmed, “It’s got a kind of symmetry, don’t you think?”

“Some symmetry!” He tried to rally. “Alright then...” He took another fortifying swallow of wine, leaned his head back against the cushions, and closed his eyes. He could hardly tell Doyle who his first lover was – Tony Kerrigan it’d been, one night while his mum had been out, both of them so desperate for it they’d barely got their trousers down before they were coming, pressed against each other, Tony’s breath harsh in his ear, which was beautifully, sloppily kissed before they descended into giggles over the joy of it all, of having someone who _knew_. 

“Mine was a bloke called John.” Doyle’s voice that, and it took a moment to sink in through the haze of memory and gently wine-stirred lust.

The hand on his thigh made him open his eyes much more quickly.

“We ran away when I was fourteen, spent a week living in a squat in Manchester, then he met someone else and I slunk back home. Was good while it lasted though. Well, you know what kids are like.” 

Doyle moved his hand higher, and Bodie forgot to breathe again. He caught Doyle’s gaze though, held it as Doyle sat up, slid across the couch, and in a smooth movement straddled him.

“Desperate for it all the time,” Bodie managed to agree, thrusting up slightly despite himself. 

“All the time...” 

Doyle kissed him.

Somewhere outside the flat there were cars and night buses and trains and the world, all going about their business, but here in the warm, inside, Doyle was kissing him.

Bodie managed to put down the glass he was still clutching in one hand, not caring what happened to the damned wine, and then he was stroking Doyle’s own thighs, moleskin stretched taut across them, soft and so very hard underneath... He spread his fingers, stretching out and around to feel Doyle’s arse, reaching back again with his thumbs to smooth the cloth over Doyle’s prick, and Doyle gasped into his mouth, and pressed forward, and moaned.

“Off, Bodie, get them _off_!”

He remembered the first time he’d seen Doyle, all strength and clear gaze outside his front door, remembered that he’d tried to touch him then and not been able to. 

Doyle was pulling down the zip on his trousers, was reaching inside. Oh _god_...

He remembered knowing almost straight away that this man, Detective Constable Doyle, who could beat him in a fight, and who could drive like he fought, was worth getting to know better. 

And now, finally, he was.

Oh, he was.

His prick was in Doyle’s hands, his mouth was on Doyle’s mouth, but it wasn’t enough, and he pulled them to lie down on the couch, legs tangling as they tried to get closer still. Skin, breath, lips, kiss – and his hands on Doyle’s arse, pulling them together again and again and _again_ , and...

As their breath slowed, as their heartbeats returned to normal, as they lay, sticky and warm and sleepy on the couch, the fridge clicked on again, and the clock ticked away, and outside the world went about its business.

 

_May 2008_


End file.
